Pages

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Today saw the "Big Five" of woodlice completed (Oniscus asellus, Porcellio scaber, Philoscia muscorum, Trichoniscus pusillus and Armadillidium vulgare) along with the other very common Sea Slater Ligia oceanica. This was helped on my the arrival of the FSC woodlice key and hopefully I may add another species through the year though a browse through the distribution of species suggests I shouldn't hope for too much - woodlice seem to mostly be southern softies!

Most groups have been recorded more or less in line with expectations, though Staphylinidae have done well comparatively. If any groups have been surprising they've been Collembola and Molluscs. Collembola is really only surprising because I didn't set out to pay that much attention to them - it just sort of happened. No doubt I'll add a few more now I'm into the swing with them. Molluscs of course benefitted hugely from working the seashore, though my land mollusc list has grown somewhat too and I'm developing an affinity for slugs. I expect to add a few more through the year and I haven't even recorded Arion ater yet!

Another group I'm expanding my awareness of is the marine algae, and the target for that is growing, aided by arrival of new literature.

Species of the month in January was easily the springtail Anurida denisi. Species of the month for February, though it isn't the most scarce, has to be reprazentin for Molluscs and is the Prickly Snail Acanthinula aculeata

Below the high water mark I loved seeing this Willy Wonka Snail (flat periwinkle), which I don't think I ever got round to posting on here

So the numbers at the end of February (anything I do tonight will be lumped into March)

Class

Jan

Feb

target

%

Algae

8

13

22

59

Lichens

37

41

60

68

Fungi

28

31

100

31

Vert -
Birds

38

50

110

45

Vert -
Other

2

4

10

40

Lepidoptera

1

2

110

02

Diptera

4

7

100

07

Arachnida

5

13

55

24

Coleoptera

6

17

100

17

Mollusc

9

24

32

75

Invert -
Other

29

43

135

32

Plants -
Vascular

47

63

124

51

Plants -
Bryo

22

29

45

64

236

337

1003

33

The only groups I've recorded less than 1/6th of are Diptera and Lepidoptera, but no surprise there really.It won't be long, though, before it all kicks off.

Monday, February 27, 2017

Reached 10 Staphylinidae on Saturday as I creep towards the one third mark. Throwing leaf litter into a white tray has been a lot of fun and makes me think I want a bigger and more robust white tray. When I ordered it a couple of weeks back I though it was a bit indulgent to pay for a tray but now I'm thinking of buying an upgrade!

Another thing maybe worth mentioning was that i found another two spiny snails - one under a rock in a different place and one from shaking leaf litter in another place again. There must be a decent population here.

Friday, February 24, 2017

I was asked to work this evening, so took the afternoon off in lieu.
Pretty wet and murky outside but with a couple of hours to kill I
wandered down to Uig Woods in search of more slugs to photograph. Let's
face it, wet weather and slugs kinda go hand in hand, right?

I began by lifting rocks in contact with the woodland floor, not too
many slugs actually (guess they're all out gallavanting elsewhere in the
wet?) but I did find a strikingly patterned flatworm, one I knew I
hadn't seen before. Thanks to endless internet searching for obscure
creatures I thought I recognised it as the 'Many-eyed Flatworm',
discovered new to science near Cambridge a few years ago. Flippin 'eck,
this could be my most significant find on Skye yet! I took lots of pics
through my 10x handlens, which just happened to have a few raindrops on
it hence the resulting shite pics -

The last image is a mega-crop in an attempt to show the eye
configuration. Meh, they're all pants shots but I whacked them on
Facebook anyway. Brian Eversham (a flatworm expert and the guy who found
the initial individual near Cambridge!) reckons it looks good for his
species. Christian Owen thinks it looks good too, he found a couple in
South Wales. So there you have it, I've discovered the awesome Marionfyfea adventor
new to Scotland and by far the northernmost individual ever discovered
IN THE WORLD!!!! :) There's a really detailed account of the speciesin this paperpublished just three months ago, it lists all of the known sightings IN THE WORLD and there really aren't many!

I've emailed a chap at the Terrestrial Flatworm Recording Scheme asking
if he wants the specimen. No reply yet. I don't have any pure ethanol
laying about so I purchased a shot of 61% proof whisky from the bar
downstairs, that'll have to do as preservative! I now have two glass
tubes worth of the stuff sitting on my desk. No danger of me necking it,
I bloody hate the stuff.

So as if yesterday's Kontikia andersoni and Microplana terrestris combined with today's Marionfyfea adventor wasn't already enough flatworm excitement to keep me grinning, I lifted a nearby rock and found this

Microplana scharffi - a native species and only about the 3rd or 4th one of these I've ever seen

Cor blimey, it's flatworm central up here! I'll soon be challenging Dave Fenwick's back garden
in Cornwall for having the most species of flatworm recorded from a
single site! Ok, maybe not quite that many...probably. Just have to see
what else I can uncover over the coming months.

Of the slugs I didn't find anything different or obtain any new pics. In fact the only thing I took a photo of was this Copse Snail Arianta arbustorum. Ocys harpaloides, a smallish Carabid, was found underneath a stone, new for the site and my yearlist.

All of which has nudged me just slightly further towards the 400 species barrier

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Spent most of the afternoon out and about looking for slugs and snails to photograph. I've started a new Gallery on my blog entitled Molluscs and figured I better try for a few half-decent pics. No such luck, they're still shite but better than nothing! Here's a couple for you

Deroceras reticulatum - common in NG3963

Possibly Arion hortensis, which would be new for Skye

Naturally I found other stuff hiding away beneath stones and half-buried plastic sheeting, I also found a couple of terrestrial flatworms and a land nemertine.

Kontikia andersoni (left) and Microplana terrestris (right)

Despite being such a gaudy looking creature, Kontikia andersoni
is doubtless under-recorded in Britain, in fact it seems that this may
be the first Scottish record! This one was about a centimetre long, the Microplana terrestris elongated itself to maybe 2cm in length which I've never seen them do before. I did wonder if it was actually Rhynchodemus sylvaticus, but the movements and eye placement were wrong.

Note the trail of yellow stuff in front of it.....?

I found this land nemertine on a bit of moss-covered debris in long
grass, a tiny wee thing. I wasn't sure if it was another flatworm or not
and then it did something quite incredible - the long yellow thing
lashed out from its head, blindly waved and flickered around a few times
(imagine a hummingbird's tongue rapidly probing a deep flowerhead!) and
seemed to drop off! What the..??? It was all so fast it was amazing,
I'm lucky to have been watching at that precise instant. I tried to pot
the tiny beast but incredibly it just fell to pieces in a sloppy mess!
Buggered if I know what's going on, but all that was left were gobbets
of slimy body pieces that I wiped off on my jeans! If anybody knows the
species I'd be happy to hear your thoughts. I'm guessing it's an Argonemertes sp but that's as far as I can get. At a guess.

Had a stint at an old bottle tip earlier...didn't stay long as it was a tad windy lol.Its a very good site for Androniscus dentiger (Rosy Woodlouse) and Haplopthalmus danicus, these being the last two woodlice that i know i can find in this square. Several Rosy found and a few Haplopthalmus mengii, none H. danicus to be seen.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Quick blast into the square today between rainbursts. The tide was mostly in but I had a look across the top of the beach
anyway. I could see a long line of yucky white gunk along the water's
edge and headed off to investigate. Nothing to worry about, it was just
spume. The only object that caught my attention on the beach was this rather lovely razor shell covered in the calcified tubes of Spirobranchus triqueter. Despite dunking them into the sea I failed to see any sign of the worms inside, hence they aren't added to my tally (yet...)

Triangular in cross-section with a sharp 'spike' above the mouth of the tube

Leaving the beach I headed into the woods and discovered a large pile of
rocks behind the community hall car park. I had a search under several
rocks finding plenty of slugs including a single Worm Slug Boettgerilla pallens and several Budapest Slugs Tandonia budapestensis
complete with accompanying 'slug mites' scurrying across them. It has
recently been discovered that the mites on slugs are a different species
than was first thought. In Britain (and across much of Europe) they
have proved to be Riccardoella oudemansi and not Riccardoella limacum as was assumed. According to the brilliant FSC Slugs of Britain & IrelandBudapest Slugs
have not been recorded from northern Skye before, in fact there's just
one dot on the map for Skye as a whole. But it is a successfully
expanding species (much to the dismay of farmers and gardeners, this
really is a pest species!) so I'm not at all surprised to find them in
Uig. Worm Slug was only discovered on Skye in the early 2000s
(and only discovered in Britain in 1972) so it's done well to move this
far in little over 40 years. There was also a single Tramp Slug Deroceras invadensbeneath
the stones.

This is the pile of rocks in question. Doubtless I shall come here again (and again...and again...)

As you can see, the woodland floor is starting to burst
into life with thousands upon thousands of seedlings thrusting through.
Give it another month and I'll be able to start identifying them!
Actually I can do a few, even at this stage. Ground Elder is most evident in the above image, but there'sa Dandelion and some Cow Parsley in there too.

Seeing as it had been raining and the lichens were looking at their best, I visited theLobaria virens tree. Yep, no getting away from it, this looks pretty damn amazing when wet! This is without flash or image manipulation

Lobaria virens - translates literally as "the Green Lobaria"

And with that I've run out of greens. I didn't find any
lifers out there today, or at least none that I could identify, but it
was good just to get out into the woods despite the buffeting wind and
ever present threat of a drenching.

Rummaging around in the woods yesterday I managed to pick up a bit of this and that and was on my way back to the car when I had a thought that some woodlice I saw may not have been O.asellus. It's not a group I have a lot of familiarity with outside a handful of species so I turned back to take a second look.

Turned out this was fortunate as I noticed a small spiky ball on the edge of the stone I turned to pick some specimens from. A quick handlens examination came up trumps with a Spiny Snail (Acanthinula aculeata) and alongside it another small snail. Double the size of the first but still pretty tiny - Lauria cylindracea. Still on the same small stone the size wars continued as there was also Punctum pygmaeum. A lovely trio of tiny snails, like some kind of Mollusc nouvelle cuisine. All went into the smallest pot with oodles of space to spare.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Gave this area a look over today. Most of the large trees have been cleared by Network Rail, log piles every where...out of photo. Picked up several beetles (which made my day as i was beginning to think Beetles had all but vanished from my square), some Pseudo's and a few other things. Taking me to 233 with still a few things to check through...

Friday, February 17, 2017

Gave myself an extra long dinner break and decided to visit a rough bit of ground known for its Ghost slug population. The site didn't disappoint, as it produced a Ghosty almost immediately. It didn't look to be in the best of shapes and it wouldn't extend.

Ghost Slug

The scarce Millipede Propolydesmus testaceus was seen in its usual high numbers, alongside another scarce Millipede Brachychaeteuma
melanops.

Brachychaeteuma
melanops

Further in was some hibernating Herald moths, counted 41 in all, a Cryptopa parisi and several Liverworts that covered much of the ground and walls...mostly Lunularia
cruciata, Preissia
quadrata and Pellia
endiviifolia.

Herald Moths

Site of Hibernating Herald Moths

Cryptops parisi

Preissia quadrata

Lunularia cruciata

Cutting thought the fence to get onto the river produced a Goldcrest hunting through the Buddleja. Some fresh Otter spraint seen along the sewer pipe running along the river...so there is one about.

Rhymney River

Otter Spraint

Scanning the large high walls for signs of life produced another Ghost slug. First time I've ever come across one out in the open like this, especially climbing? Not sure if this has been documented before?

Ghost Slug

Ghost Slug climbing wall

An Honey Bee sat out on a stone on upper banks of the river. While a Water Cricket and Amphibious Leech were found.